Starting the process of migrating to the cloud can be daunting. Legacy systems that are colossal in scale often overwhelm the average team tasked with the mission of digital transformation. How can they possibly untangle years of legacy code to start this new digital transformation initiative? Not only are these systems colossal in scale, but also colossal in terms of business importance.

We are truly at a unique tipping point in the history of technology. The pace of growth is more rapid than ever before, with estimates of more than 150B connected devices and data growth up to 175 Zettabytes by 2025.

Just over 25 years ago, Bill Gates and Hasso Plattner met to form an alliance between Microsoft and SAP that has become one of our industry’s longest lasting alliances. At the time their conversation was focused on how Windows could be the leading operating system for SAP’s SAPGUI desktop client and when released a few years later, how Windows NT could be a server operating system of choice for running SAP R/3.

We all want the truth. To properly assess your cloud analytics provider, ask them about the only three things that matter: independent benchmark results, company-wide access to insights, and security & privacy.